Beautiful
by blueandblack
Summary: Twenty-Five 100 word drabbles based on the prompt 'Beautiful'. Various pairings and characters.


Qualification I, Jacob/Bella

--

_Sort of_ beautiful.

It takes Jacob a lifetime to understand the qualification.

It hits him with a bang one nondescript morning, long after Bella is a dead thing, long after he has let go of that once precious and confounding half-compliment.

He walks into the Cullen house, sighs when Nessie yells that she's not ready yet, turns, pauses on the landing for one brief second, catches sight of Bella in her room.

She is looking at herself in her dresser mirror and he is looking at her.

Her reflection's too-bright eyes flicker to his.

It hits him with a bang.

--

Qualification II, Jacob/Bella

--

Jacob never really looks at Bella anymore.

Nessie is all his body lets him see most of the time, and the rest… In those brief disconnects, those tiny slivers in which he's _Jacob_ again… He would rather turn away, claw out his own two eyes, he would rather be blind.

She is agony to look at, and in this moment, locked together in the mirror, a new wound tears.

Bella is beautiful. Jacob knew that already, he has always known that.

But now _she_ does.

It breaks his heart that she couldn't see it through the _sort of_ of humanity.

--

Slighted I, Rosalie

--

Rosalie overhears Bella Swan gushing to Alice about how _beautiful_ Edward is.

She goes on and on (_and on and on – Adonis? Archangel? What the hell is this crap?!_) and eventually Alice interjects, says Jasper is very handsome too.

Bella agrees with polite enthusiasm. Neither of them mentions Emmett.

_Why would they?_ Rosalie reminds herself, _It's not as though they mentioned Carlisle either._

And yet, she still feels oddly slighted.

She goes shopping forthwith, buys Emmett a gift – a charcoal-gray, fine wool sweater that might be just a little small for a man of his muscular build.

_Perfect._

_--_

Slighted II, Rosalie

--

Emmett isn't entirely thrilled with his gift.

"You don't think maybe it's a little small?"

"No! It's perfect. The shop girl said this is how everyone is wearing them these days."

Rosalie stands behind him, admires their reflection in the mirror while she runs a hand over the fine wool coating Emmett's broad shoulder.

"See you pretty you look?" she purrs.

Emmett can't help but smile. "Not as pretty as you, baby."

Rosalie frowns, cocks her head to one side. "Well, no. That would never do."

Emmett is laughing when she takes his hand, leads him to the living room.

--

Slighted III, Rosalie

--

Emmett tries to hang behind Rose, stick to the shadows. She tugs at his hand and shoves him in front of her, says loudly "Hello, you two!"

Alice turns, and her eyes widen. "Emmett! Oh my _God! Gorgeous_…"

Rosalie allows herself a little smirk.

"It's _gorgeous!_" Within one second Alice is fingering the new sweater, muttering "It's Donna Karan right? New season?"

Rosalie's face falls.

_Right. She just likes the wrapper. Of course. _

Alice pulls out the tag at Emmett's neck with a quick "How much?"

Emmett just rolls his eyes.

Bella Swan gazes adoringly at Edward's piano.

Rosalie seethes.

--

Belonging I, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

Jacob and Leah run together most days – on two legs.

Leah instigated the tradition with "No sense neglecting the bodies God gave us, Jake." She poked his stomach with a wicked grin and a hint of flirtation. "You're gonna get soft."

Now they run together most days, and Bella sometimes catches the last stretch, watches them sweating, panting, laughing their way up to the front porch of the Cullen house.

On one such occasion Leah bursts past her muttering something about needing to pee then pass out, and Bella and Jacob are left alone.

"Beautiful," she whispers, half to herself.

--

Belonging II, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

"Huh?"

Jacob gives her a quizzical look, steps back to shake the sweat out of his hair, stretch out his long red-brown limbs.

"You and Leah," Bella says with calculated softness. "You look so beautiful together." She smiles, waits till Jacob sees it before she adds "You match."

Jacob's eyes narrow. "What do you mean by that?"

Bella holds his gaze for a moment, trying to find a way to be light and heavy at the same time. Finally she shrugs. "I just mean… you sure would make pretty babies."

Jacob leans low, speaks sharp. "What are you doing, Bella?"

--

Belonging III, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

Bella's new instinct tells her to lunge forward, match Jacob's body language, kick this up a few notches, come on, animal to animal…

She steels herself, recoils instead.

"I was just making an observation, Jacob. There's no need to - "

Jacob interrupts her, harsh and quick. "I thought you were over wanting to save your poor innocent daughter from my evil paedo clutches."

Bella shrinks for real this time. "What? I don't mean… This isn't about…" She hesitates, swallows knives, wishes she could swallow this whole conversation with them. "I just thought you two looked good together. That's all."

--

Belonging IV, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

"No," Jacob insists. "It's more than that. There's _subtext._"

He lets the word hang between them, searches Bella's pale, pristine face for a reaction.

He can't find anything, and for a flimsy second he feels frustrated, because he can't _find_ things in her anymore…

Eventually he sighs. "Look. Really. Let's just get this out once and for all. What is your problem with me, Bella? Do I just screw up your picture-perfect family?"

When she doesn't answer he throws his hands up. "God, you _still_ think I don't belong with Nessie. Just like I didn't belong with - "

--

Belonging V, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

"You _don't_ belong with her Jacob!"

The cry is a little too passionate, and Bella looks around herself guiltily, lowers her voice to a whisper. "And you don't belong with me either. Not in this… Not anymore."

Her heart slips unexpectedly into those words, translates itself into his.

Fluent, fluid.

_Easy as breathing. _

Jacob can't react at all.

It's too much.

He finds himself weathering a sudden storm, trying to stay standing under the battering weight of this foreign-familiar mess Bella is pouring into him.

It's too much, it's too right, it's too wrong, it's too ugly, it's too sweet…

--

Belonging VI, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

Bella tries to wrest some of the wistfulness from her voice before she speaks again.

"I'm not trying to upset you, I promise. I just… When I see you with Leah… Running like that… You know, running till you _can't_. Breathing and _out of breath._ Living _alive_, the way only people who are going to die can… It's you, Jake. And it's beautiful."

Jacob swallows, suddenly wishing he could expunge the word beautiful from the English language.

_And sort. And of._

He doesn't speak.

He's still waiting for the tide to pull back.

_Pull back. Leave me the fuck alone. _

--

Belonging VII, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

Bella peers quickly into the house to check that Leah isn't coming out. It's unnecessary, just a human relic.

She steps toward Jacob, reminds herself that everyone has super-hearing around here.

"Jacob, have you honestly not noticed the way she looks at you? She really cares about you, more than Re…" She shakes her head, decides to keep it simple. "Just think about it. You could have - "

Jacob didn't miss that syllable. It screams and he stands to attention.

"I could have what? What was that earlier? Some crap about making pretty babies? Leah can't even have kids!"

--

Belonging VIII, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

"You don't know that. If she stopped phasing, it makes sense that her body would right itself. If you both stopped phasing…"

The last part sounds like a plea, one that makes too much – _too little_, the angry parts of Jacob will protest, _too little_ - sense with what follows.

"You could have it all, Jake," Bella says earnestly, "You could have all the things I took - "

Jacob cuts her off with a low growl. He can't hear these things. These sort-of-beautiful never-quite-happeneds don't sit right in his mind anymore.

They're a twist of lime in milk.

--

Belonging IX, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

Bella is giving him her best beseeching look and it's pretty good, even if red, puffy eyes work better in these cases than clear and bright and lovely and perfect…

Jacob feels like a child, all sulking and deliberate defiance, fists clenched, a beat away from stamping his –

_Did you seriously just stamp your foot? I thought girls only…_

He shakes his head, squares his jaw. "Honestly Bells, what part of 'center of my universe' do you not understand?"

Bella is ready for that. She comes armed with quick, piercing words. "The part where it's you, Jacob Black, defending it."

--

Belonging X, Jacob, Bella, Leah

--

Jacob bristles, smirks, folds his arms.

But it takes him too long to come up with words to go with all that.

"Defending what?" he asks finally, "My right to a little fucking happiness?"

Bella _does_ stamp her foot. Jacob nearly doubles over.

"Since when is imprinting _happiness?_ Since when is it this beautiful thing, Jacob? What the hell happened to 'Just another way of getting your choices taken away from you'?"

Jacob pulls his arms tighter around his body and everything in him _curdles._

Bella nods like she's answering something.

"Yeah. Apparently Leah thinks about that a whole lot."

--

Hold On Tight I, Jasper/Alice

--

Jasper and Alice lie naked and entwined on a bed they'll never sleep in.

They've just come down from the kind of high that fuses bodies and minds, the kind of high that should leave them liquid, lazy…

And yet Alice's slender arms wrap a little too stiffly around Jasper's back. And Jasper clings to her hands, presses them to his chest.

"I'm rather jealous of you, Alice," he whispers, "You saw us… You had this to keep you going all these years."

Alice swallows, dips behind his ear with kisses.

"I saw us… but it wasn't always this beautiful."

--

Hold On Tight II, Jasper/Alice

--

Jasper turns in Alice's arms, smiles wryly with a quick glance at the dim, flickering bulb overhead. "Oh, I suppose this lighting is more forgiving than some."

Alice just laughs. There's no need for _Don't be silly, scars are scars, you, Jasper, are beautiful and I…_

That's all unnecessary. Somehow Jasper _knows_, somehow he feels the sincerity of her skin on his…

He feels it, kisses it back into her two-fold.

Finally Alice says softly, "I think it was harder actually, knowing what I could lose… One decision out of place and…"

She curls around him, he holds on tight.

--

Afterglow I, Jacob/Bella

--

"I wish I could see us right now," Bella says.

Jacob's eyes flutter open and he breaks a balmy smile to mutter "Huh?"

Bella reaches up behind herself to stroke his face, runs her fingertips over the tight knot of his upper arm, lets her eyes follow their path over his hipbone to his thigh, dark and bright against her pale one.

It's beautiful.

"I wish I could look at us," she murmurs, "like I was someone else."

Suddenly Jacob bursts out laughing.

"Oh Bells, you want a ceiling-mirror? And to think, all this time I've been hiding the porn."

--

Afterglow II, Jacob/Bella

--

Bella turns to face him.

"Jacob? Shut your mouth."

He splutters to a stop, but the grin only fades when she kisses him smooth like a wave, rolls back, whispers "I just feel…"

A blush bleeds out of her smile. "We just feel really pretty right now."

Jacob's heart twists and he can't stop his hands tightening at her waist because _Bella Swan is naked in my arms and calling it pretty with a pretty smile. _

He fetches his camera, takes random, blurry photographs of them, one long arm stretched high above…

Photos-In-Bed Day. It becomes an annual thing.

--

Life, Love I, Edward, Rosalie

--

Edward considers the true beauty of life.

_Strength inside fragility, knotted clay held tenderly, whispering to time I-will-be, I-will-make…_

A brilliant rising above, endless, over in a flash, the splash of color on the earth's surface where a man has lived, worked, loved…

Edward never told Rosalie this, but it used to sometimes comfort him to read her mind.

She was the only one in the family who thought about life and its bitter twin existence as he did, albeit with more rage and less poetry.

Her dark-bright musings made him feel less alone, even if he never shared his.

--

Life, Love II, Edward, Leah

--

Edward considers the true beauty of love.

_A constant earning, a manger on the edge of a knife, straw-lined sweetness laced with faint What-if…_

The picture on the box shifts, blossoms, frays, but these lovers are holding tight, still struggling to make their pieces fit, and they fight, with each other, together against the quick spiral of each breath…

Love is a simple thing for vampires and imprinted wolves. Absolute, static, diamond-clear.

Nobody else in Edward's family bothers to think about it.

So he smiles at Leah's thoughts, even if they're rougher round the edges than Rosalie's ever were.

--

Assumptions, Quil/Claire

--

Sometimes Quil really wished Claire had been adopted. He wished her parents had picked his soulmate up in Beijing, Bangladesh, Oslo, wherever.

Then there might have been less instances of "Oh! What a beautiful little girl you have! She looks just like her daddy."

After a while he gave up correcting people - it seemed to freak them out.

_(Oh, she's your sister?_

No.

Your niece?

No.

Your… cousin?

No.

…)

For the last couple of years Quil had taken to just nodding and smiling.

It was simpler that way.

For now.

Claire was starting to give him weird looks.

--

Shallow, Edward, Bella, Rosalie

--

Edward has always abhorred the tendency of humans and vampires alike to become preoccupied with physical beauty.

That's why he dismissed Rosalie so easily when their eyes first met and he heard a quick flurry of _He's beautiful, more beautiful than me maybe, no, not quite, maybe…_

_Shallow,_ he thought wearily, with a chaser of _Beautiful? Perhaps. For a_ monster.

Bella Swan loves the monster. He can't get inside her to make sense of that gift.

_...this godlike creature, bewildering perfection, glorious as a young god, carving of Adonis, his beauty stunned my mind…_

Edward never heard any of that.

--

Pretty, Sam, Leah, Emily

--

There are some thoughts you never want anyone to hear, even if you have made a name for yourself and that name happens to be _Bitch._

Leah runs as fast as this powerful new body will allow, footfall pounding at her pain.

Sam phases on the crest of a wave.

_and Jesus, I was hotter than her _before_ Sam ripped half her face off but – _

Sam's mind is one big appalled _Leah…_

Her heart twists guiltily, she snarls at it, pushes harder.

Fuck _off, Sam. Just be glad you can't read _her _mind. I'm sure it's not all..._ pretty.

--

Blushing, Leah, Rosalie, Edward

--

Rosalie was getting married.

(Yes, again.)

She finished adjusting the sash on the thin silk sheath, stepped back and beamed at Leah.

"Perfect," she said with a contented sigh. "I told you the red would look stunning on you."

She leaned in close with a sidelong glance at Edward who had just walked in, whispered conspiratorially "That's why I chose it," raised her voice for "You'll be the most beautiful bridesmaid. By _far._"

Leah snorted, rolled her eyes. "Stop, I'm blushing."

Edward couldn't help but laugh softly at the sweet, pleasured truth of that when he found it inside her.


End file.
